Scorpions and Shopping

To the patient reader, this is a multi part blog on my second visit to Saudi Arabia.


The scorpion
The warm, wintry sunlight dapples onto a sun washed courtyard. Simba, my increasingly fat dog eyes me with one lazy eye and luxuriously stretches out on the stone floor and gives a delicate little yawn.

A scorpion skitters by in front of him, and in the next bat-of-an-eye moment, he's transformed into the German Shepherd he had forgotten he was, and makes a lunge for it. I make a lunge for his tail with a panicked shout, and my Mom and husband run out to see what all the fuss was about. A few Egyptian cats yowl in the distance, to add their bit to the fray. The next minute it's all over, Dad managed to run out of nowhere and squash the scorp.



Scorpion aftermath - Simba sulking

This is a typical 11am on a weekend in Saudi Arabia. To the uninitiated, a weekend in Saudi Arabia falls on Thursday and Friday. Friday to them is our Sunday. Simba gives me a baleful look and will continue to ignore me for the rest of the day, because I denied him of his rightful kill.

And the day's begun! Mom makes a delicious brunch, without any alcohol by the side of course, because alcohol is banned throughout the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We wash it down with strong Arabic coffee spiced with cardamom from a dallah (Arabic coffee pot), to fight off any food coma.



The Dallah - Arabic Coffee pot and its little handle-less cups

Khobar

We take off in Dad's gas guzzling Porsche to the Al Rashid mall at Khobar, two hours away from Dammam, where we live. Dad loves the fact that gas is cheaper than water there ( about 91 cents a gallon) and that Saudi Arabia has beautiful freeways, thanks to their billion dollar construction industry. Incidentally, it is not unusual to fall asleep while driving on these freeways, because of the unchanging monochromatic desert landscape.



The Al Rashid Mall at Khobar


I've been to middle eastern malls before in Bahrain, but this one caught me by surprise with its sheer and unsurpassed opulence. The middle-east is known for its great shopping malls and shopping festivals (like the Dubai Shopping Festival). To my delight and my family's exasperation, I also learn Saudi Arabia doesnt charge any sales tax. Ha. Let the shopping spree begin!

Shopping

I walk by in a trance, from one beautiful shop to another. The magnitude and the scale of the malls awe me, and I'm pretty sure I heard my Dad and husband groan a little when I walk into a spectacular jewelry shop – Erum.

After some convincing, they coaxed me out of the shop, and I made a beeline to the furniture showroom. A four poster bed, fit for a queen was the centerpiece. It had beautiful cherry oak paneling, a minaret like headboard, and soft silk drapes that enticingly clung on to the posts.

For the millionth time that day, I wish I could transport the whole kit and caboodle to the US.

..next up - Food!